The present disclosure relates to a medical stopcock which is used when injecting a medical fluid into a patient.
In the medical field, a medical stopcock such as a three-way stopcock is often used in an infusion set or the like. For example, if a three-way stopcock is used, a different type of medical fluid can be easily mixed and injected in the course of injecting a predetermined medical fluid into a patient with the infusion set.
In addition, as the medical stopcock, a structure into which bacteria does not enter is desirable. A medical stopcock is disclosed in Japanese Patent Publication No. JP-A-2003-159336, which can prevent bacteria from invading from a bypass port by blocking the inside of a branch pipe from an external atmosphere by a partition wall.
However, in the medical stopcock disclosed in JP-A-2003-159336, there is a problem in that the medical fluid is retained in a bypass port. In addition, there are various types of the medical fluids which are injected from the bypass port. For example, a case is conceivable in which a medical fluid for raising blood pressure is injected from the bypass port and, after several hours, a medical fluid for dropping blood pressure is injected. Even though only a small amount of the medical fluid for raising blood pressure remains in the inside of the bypass port after the medical fluid for raising blood pressure is injected from the bypass port, inconvenience may be caused when the medical fluid for raising blood pressure which remains therein is pushed out by the medical fluid for dropping blood pressure which is injected after several hours. Therefore, it is preferable that an amount of the medical fluid retained in the inside of the medical stopcock is reduced to as little as possible.
Furthermore, in a three-way stopcock of the related art, since the flow of the medical fluid can be generally stopped in some or the whole of a flow path by rotating a cock by approximately 45 degrees, it is not preferable that such operability is lowered.
Embodiments of the present invention are provided in view of such problems and an object of certain embodiments of the invention is to provide a medical stopcock which reduces retention of a medical fluid in the inside thereof more than the related art and maintains operability similar to the related art.